ARTICLE

THE SUBTERFUGE OF ART

Art can convey more than just the beauty of an enchanted grove or the
captivating smile of its subject. Find out some of the more devious uses
that art pieces might have in the Forgotten Realms.
Wealthy folk across Faern have enjoyed art for centuries, but rumors have spread
from the later 1300s DR onward of some widespread illicit uses of art. These shady
doings were made possible because of two common aboveboard customs in Amn,
Tethyr, Calimshan, the Vilhon Reach, and Chessenta. The first is the custom of nobles
and the wealthy of sending very true-to-life head-and-shoulders portraits of possible
spouses to would-be suitors. The second involves the habit of painting grand houses,
castles, or owned buildings when newly built or renovated as a commemoration and
later to send copies of the results to possible purchasers or to those holding such
property as collateral.

So art was traveling often, and thats where the darker ideas came in. No one knows
whose clever mind was the first to think of smuggling documents, treaties, receipts,
debt-bonds (what we might call IOUs), and dangerous messages by means of paintings
but its being going on for years upon years now, among many.

SHIPPING DETAILS
Sketches, inferior copies, and bulk unfinished paintings may be rolled like oversized
scrolls and protected in lengths of clay drainpipes that are fitted into padded wooden
cradles made to wedge snugly inside
protective crates. Finished paintings
are more often shipped framed and
mounted, or pressed (clamped in a
pressa protective sandwich of
wooden slabs, one of which is larger
than the painting and fashioned with
a raised lip or frame, so as to create a
shallow tray the painting sits in,
between protective padding layers of
oiled cloth, and is then covered by
the other slab of wood, the slabs
strapped tightly together).

A pressed or framed and mounted

painting may have a mounting front
sheet that frames it within the
(usually wooden) outer frame, behind
which is the painting itself (on board
or tile, or canvas stretched over a
board or tile). Behind the painting is a
protective hardboard (thick
parchment or thin wooden veneer
panel), then one or more sheets that
can be taken out to act as protective
coverings for the painting, and then a thin wooden or slate backboard. Those one or
more sheets can, of course, be anythingand the smuggling happens when they are
treaties, contracts, or even spell scrolls, hidden between painting and backboard so as
to enter a city or country unseen by customs inspectors or border guards.

INCREASINGLY UNSAVORY USES

At least one criminal gang (the Archondar of Zazesspur) sent kill orders (directions as to
who should be assassinated, how, and when) and detailed instructions to members
(usually coded, but sometimes not) in messages slipped into the layers of paintings, to
their agents up and down the Sword Coast. Such killings were often orchestrated with
particular timing or planted clues to send pointed messages or falsely cast blame for the
slayings.

The formulae for making blended wines or perfumes are known to have been sent via
paintings from business owners (in Tethyr, for example) to their employees elsewhere
(such as the cities of Waterdeep, Selgaunt, and Silverymoon). So have maps, including
stolen ones being sent out of the city they were purloined in to safer hands in distant
places.

In a recent incident of espionage, several counterfeited messages, purporting to be

from a ruler to his envoy, were sent to a spy in a rival city where they could be planted
in a manner that would allow them to be found easily so as to cause trouble for the
ruler and, at the same time, to lead astray the authorities of that city.

Nobles who hosted revels often in Waterdeep hit upon the idea of using portraits
hanging in their homes as static message drops: the paintings stayed in one place, but
various guests coming into the home would know to place or retrieve messages from
the backs of particular paintings, when unobserved.

As Alustriel once commented, while ruling Silverymoon, I marvel at the utter and
tireless endlessness of the deviousness of folk everywhere. Inspiring, in a way, but the
vigilance it demands is exhausting!

MANY MISHAPS
On some occasions, paintings have reached the wrong recipients or been so delayed in
arriving that their hidden contents caused confusion or tragic misunderstandings.

A competent posted-to-Waterdeep trade factor whod succeeded a hated-to-be-

eliminated predecessor was murdered instead of her forerunner. Orders to burn down
a warehouse and its contents reached the wrong hands, who mistakenly committed
arson on the wrong property. Covert agents of a gang tried repeatedly to ally and work
with unsuitable guild contacts who hated their organization and had no intention of
loyally working with them, because theyd received orders meant for another
organization entirely, and tried to act on them.

ANOTHER WAY
Certain users of the traveling
painting subterfuge began to fear
it would be detected, so they
stopped hiding items inside the
layers of shipped paintings and
turned to conveying meanings by
elements included in the painted
scenes themselves. This became
known as showing secrets.

Sometimes hidden maps or

diagrams are sent by drawing
them into complicated floor plans
and builders drawings (for
buildings to be built, or supplies
to be assembled to specific
lengths, sizes, and shapes for
construction). Cryptic notations
aid someone in the know to disentangle whats part of the hidden map or diagram from
the floor plan its been made part of.
Others hit upon the idea of hiding messages in the relatively voluminous texts of cheap
chapbooks; recipients in the know followed a pattern of selecting particular words (for
example, the word at the right-hand end of the topmost line on every fourth page) to
learn the message meant for them.

In the case of the static message drops used by certain Waterdhavian nobles, one
energetic noble had two versions of the same painting made: one with a pennant flying
from a background turret, and one with no pennant. If a guest saw the pennant, that
meant one predetermined message; if there was no pennant visible, they knew the
other meaning intended for them.

SHOWING SECRETS
Conveying messages by means of whats shown in a painting can be unsubtle, but
specific ways of sending messages are as numerous as the artists attempting them. One
frequently used means is to paint a group portrait of several real, recognizable persons
with just one of them depicted as dressed in blood-red, or an unusual hue of clothing
(sky blue, for instance), indicating that they are the one to be targeted. Putting just one
weapon in the scene (a dagger held by someone else, for instance, or a hangmans
noose) can convey additional information; the dagger could mean assassinate the
identified person, whereas the noose could mean make it look like suicide. Or a
burning building in the background of the painting, in a scene where no weapons are
visible, could tell the recipient this: The person identified (by the sky-blue clothing) is to
die in a fire; clubbed senseless and left to look like an accident.

FACING IT
A relatively recent innovation in hiding messages in paintings is to paint a very good
likeness of an intended targets face on the body of the supposed subject of the
painting. For example, in a painting of an elderly gowned noblewoman, the noble lady is
given the face of a younger man who is the target. This has on occasion been carried to
ridiculous extremes (young maidens painted with heavy masculine beards, for
example).

In other instances, other identifiers have been painted rather than the too-obvious face.
For example, a beautiful maiden or known personage (high priest, famous dead hero) is
depicted as normal, but with a tattoo or brand or specific injury (missing fingers or a
deformity) added that the subject did not possess or never had, but which a target
individual does have and can readily be identified by.

Certain Harpers in the past used this in combination with temporary, cosmetically
applied tattoos on cheeks, shoulders, necks, hands, and other readily visible body areas
so agents could identify each other or contacts. This practice passed out of use when
certain foes learned of it and realized how easy it was to make the intended agent or
contact disappear and replace them with an impostor to which the right temporary
cosmetic mark had been applied. Some Harpers still use a modification of this: false
scars and wounds applied by someone very skilled in applying cosmetics, so the
distinctive permanent disfigurement looks very real.

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